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This dissertation investigates a special class of anaphoric form, yè, in Ewe known as the logophoric pronoun. This research makes a number of novel observations.
In the first chapter, I introduce the reader to the phenomenon under investigation as well as provide information on Ewe and its dialects and, methodology. In Chapter 2, I present the pronominal system of Ewe which is categorised into strong and weak forms following Cardinaletti & Starke (1994) and Agbedor (1996). The distribution of pronouns is outlined which sets the tone for an overview of logophoric marking. In this respect, I present variations in logophoric marking strategies cross linguistically and show that Ewe differs significantly from other pronouns in this category. In an effort to explain the deviant case of yè, I entertain the idea that yè is a pure logophoric pronoun in the sense of Clements (1975) and thus, its additional de re and strict interpretation does not imply non-logophoricity.
Chapter 3 demonstrates that yè is sensitive to contexts which portray the intention of an individual. Following Sells (1987), the antecedent of yè must have an intention to communicate. I broadly categorize logophoric contexts into reportative (direct-indirect speech) or non-reportative (speaker’s mental attitude, reporter’s observation or background knowledge of a situation). Based on this categorization, indirect speech report (Clements 1975), dis- course units such as a paragraph or an episode (Clements 1975), and sentential adjuncts such as purpose, causal and consequence clauses (Culy 1994a) are reviewed. The logophoric pro- noun occurs in the complement of attitude verbs (Clements 1975), also termed logocentric (à la (Stirling 1994)) or logophoric predicates (à la (Culy 1994a)) as well as with non-attitudinal verbs (e.g. va ‘come’ or wO ‘do’ as in sentential adjuncts). I argue contra Clements (1975) and Culy (1994a) that yè can occur with perception predicates. I further provide three new instances of non-reportative contexts which are compatible with yè namely, as-if clauses, benefactive na clauses and alesi ‘how’ clauses. I show, corroborating previous studies that contexts which are necessary for the licensing of yè include all of the aforementioned except causal clauses. Among these contexts, the complementizer be or regarding cases where there is no be, an element in C (due to the Doubly-Filled-Comp Filter (DFCF) c.f. Chomsky & Lasnik (1977)), is sufficient to license yè. Following Bimpeh & Sode (2021), yè is licensed by feature checking (in the spirit of von Stechow (2004)): be bears the interpretatble [log] feature which checks the uninterpretable [log] feature of yè. I include a redefinition of logophoricity as pertaining to Ewe.
Given the disparity found in the literature concerning the interpretation of yè: Ewedome (pronounce EVedome) has only de se readings (Bimpeh 2019); while ‘pure’ Ewe, Mina (variety of Ewe spoken in Togo) Pearson (2015), Danyi (O’Neill 2015) and Anlo (pronounced ANlO) (Satık 2019) has de re readings; chapter 4 aims at lending empirical support to the ungoing discussion by verifying the interpretation of yè. Two acceptability judgment tasks were conducted namely, truth value judgment task and binary forced choice task. The results corroborates Pearson (2012, 2015) and others’ discovery that yè has a de re interpretation in the Ewedome (contra Bimpeh (2019); Bimpeh et al. (2022)), Anlo and Tonu (pronounced TONu) dialects of Ewe.
In chapter 5, I discuss the relation between logophoricity (yè, yè a) and Control (PRO). I show that yè may be restricted to a set of verbs which obligatorily require the morpheme a ‘potential marker’ (Essegbey 2008), in subject position. This set of verbs are those that are known as control verbs c.f. (Landau 1999) in English. As a result of this restriction, research such as Satık (2019) claims that yè a is the overt instantiation of PRO in English. According to the Ewe facts, it appears as though on one hand, yè and PRO share similar properties in logophoric contexts and on the other hand, yè in combination with the potential marker, a also share properties with PRO in subject control environments. Against this background, I discuss the relation between yè, yè a and PRO and show that neither yè in isolation nor yè in combination with a, contrary to Satık (2019), is the overt instantiation of PRO. I clarify that the potential morpheme a is not cliticised or combined with the logophoric yè. The two forms are seperate morphemes. The potential marker a only shows up in control environments because a sub-class of verbs require it for grammaticality purposes. As such, the property of de se-ness does not come from yè by itself, yè a or a but rather from the sub-class of verbs which require the potential marker a...
This paper deals with German kinship terms ending with the form "n" (Muttern, Vatern). Firstly, data from newspapers are presented that show that especially Muttern denotes very special meanings that can only be derived to a limited extent from the lexical base: a) Muttern referring to a home where mother cares for you, b) Muttern standing for overprotection, and c) Muttern representing a special food style (often embedded in prepositional phrases and/or comparative constructions like wie bei or wie von Muttern). Secondly, it is argued that the addition of n to kinship terms is not a word-formation pattern, but that these word forms are instead lexicalized and idiomatized in contemporary German. Hence, a diachronic scenario is applied to account for the data. It is argued in the present paper that the n-forms have been borrowed from Low German dialects, especially from constructional idioms of the type ‘X-wie bei Muttern’ and that forms were enriched by semantic concepts associated with the dialect.
The paper explores factors that influence the distribution of constituent words of compounds over the head and modifier position. The empirical basis for the study is a large database of German compounds, annotated with respect to the morphological structure of the compound and the semantic category of the constituents. The study shows that the polysemy of the constituent word, its constituent family size, and its semantic category account for tendencies of the constituent word to occur in either modifier or head position. Furthermore, the paper explores the degree to which the semantic category combination of head and modifier word, e.g., x=substance and y=artifact, indicates the semantic relation between the constituents, e.g., y_consists_of_x.
French suffixations in -age, -ion and -ment are considered roughly equivalent, yet some differences have been pointed out regarding the semantics of the resulting nominalizations. In this study, we confirm the existence of a semantic distinction between them on the basis of a large scale distributional analysis. We show that the distinction is partially determined by the degree of technicality of the denoted action: -age nominals tend to be more technical than -ion ones. We examine this hypothesis through the statistical modeling of technicality. To this end, we propose a linguistic definition of technicality, which we implement using empirical, quantitative criteria estimated in corpora and lexical resources. We show to what extent the differences with respect to these criteria adequately approximate technicality. Our study indicates that this definition of technicality, while amendable, provides new perspectives for the characterization of action nouns.
In diesem Artikel soll eine dieser entlehnten Einheiten aus der englischen Sprache vorgestellt werden, die im Deutschen zur Bildung neuer Wörter verwendet wird: "-seller". Es soll gezeigt werden, welche Wortbildungsprodukte mit "-seller" in welchen Bedeutungsvarianten in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache auftreten bzw. ob und in welcher Bedeutung "Seller" als freies Morphem verwendet wird.
Die vorliegende Studie setzt sich mit dem Adjektiv "neu" und seinem slowakischen Äquivalent "nový" systembezogen und pragmatisch auseinander. Wir befassen uns kontrastiv mit der Bedeutungsstruktur, mit der Kollokabilität und lexikographischen Auffassung dieser Adjektive. Um alle erwähnten Ebenen in ihrer Komplexität zu erfassen, darf man sie nicht voneinander getrennt untersuchen. Bei unserer Untersuchung gehen wir von der kodifizierten Bedeutung aus, die wir mit der realen Sprachverwendung vergleichen und ihre Anwendbarkeit an der aus den Korpora gewonnenen Daten überprüfen. Bei unserer kontrastiven Vorhegensweise ist der Ausgangspunkt die Auslegung der slowakischen Bedeutungsbeschreibung der lexikalischen Einheit "nový". Zunächst erweitert sich der Forschungsgegenstand um den Vergleich der jeweiligen Erläuterungen der deutschen lexikalischen Einheit "neu" in verschiedenen deutschen Wörterbüchern. Im Anschluss an die semantische Analyse der einzelnen Adjektive in den zwei von uns ausgewählten Sprachen überprüfen wir, ob und inwiefern bei der Bedeutungsbeschreibung der Übersetzungsäquivalente "nový" und "neu" eine analogische Auslegung verwendbar ist.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob Wortschatz mit einer Sprachlernapplikation effektiv erlernt werden kann. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet die Charakteristik der Wortschatzarbeit im traditionellen Fremdsprachenunterricht. Danach wird die Sprachapplikation "duolingo" vorgestellt. Es wird dabei analysiert, wie ihre Autor/innen bei der Vermittlung des Wortschatzes didaktischen Grundsätzen und lernpsychologischen Erkenntnissen folgen. Es werden sowohl Stärken als auch Unzulänglichkeiten gezeigt, die die Qualität des Vokabellernens
beeinflussen.
Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob im gegenwärtigen deutschen Sprachgebrauch ein übermäßiger Gebrauch von Anglizismen zu beobachten ist. Als entscheidender linguistischer Grund für die häufige Verwendung von Anglizismen wird ihre Eurysemie (semantische Vagheit) angesehen. Der digitale Wandel der Medienbranche wird als außerlinguistischer Faktor betrachtet. Diese Fragen werden im Rahmen einer Studie zur Semantik der in elektronischen und in Print-Medien am häufigsten verwendeten Anglizismen behandelt.
"Memes" funktionieren nicht simpel nach dem Prinzip der "imitatio". Sie beinhalten vielmehr ein kreatives Moment der Umgestaltung und Transzendierung des vorher Dagewesenen. Obwohl sie aus Kopien hervorgehen, sind sie mehr als bloße Nachahmung, Verdoppelung und Wiederholung; sie funktionieren – im Sinne einer potenziell irritierenden Abwandlung des "mimesis"-Prinzips – "memetisch": Memes sind darauf ausgerichtet, die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit zu wecken, ein forminhaltliches Rezeptionsangebot produktiv in einen user generated content umzuformen und umzudeuten. Meme ist insofern gewissermaßen die Abkürzung für "Forminhalt mit memetischer Funktion". So gibt es memetische Fotos, Texte, Segmente, Sequenzen, Gesten, Tänze, Skulpturen und anderes mehr. Der vorliegende Aufsatz versteht sich als Versuch, ausgehend von zwei distinkten memes oder meme-Komplexen eine Art Typologie dieser Gebilde zu entwickeln und so ihre intrikate Semantik besser zu verstehen. Zur Erfüllung dieses Desiderats ausgehend von Fallbeispielen sind allerdings zunächst einige terminologische und wirkungsästhetische Präzisierungen vonnöten, die zum einen den spezifischen Reiz der "memes" oder genauer: die Spezifität der durch sie erzeugten Rezeptions- oder Kommunikationssituation erhellen, zum anderen das hier im Vordergrund stehende "politische meme" als Sonderform des "meme" schärfer konturieren sollen.
Vulgarisms, swear words and insults are a considerable and integral part of everyday language. They are used in various circumstances, such as releasing negative emotions and/or to hurt one’s feelings. These terms are also present in German and Polish song lyrics. The aim of the data analysis is to investigate functions and meanings of the lexeme 'Arsch' / 'dupa' in order to verify whether their usage in song lyrics is consistent with their definitions in dictionaries or exceeds them. The data sample comprises vulgarisms from 200 German and Polish rap and rock song lyrics. The main research area was the lexeme 'Arsch' / 'dupa', which is present in many word formation constructions in rock and rap song lyrics.